Lament for Tvardovsky

MOSCOW—There are many ways of killing a poet—the method chosen for Tvardovsky was to take away his offspring, his passion, his journal. The sixteen years of insults meekly endured by this hero were as nothing so long as literature was not stopped, so long as his journal survived, so long as people could be printed in it, so long as people could go on reading it. But then they heaped the coals of disbandment, destruction and mortification upon him, and within six months these coals had consumed him. Within six months, he took to his deathbed: and only his characteristic fortitude sustained him till now, to the last drop of consciousness, of suffering.

For the third day now the portrait hangs over the coffin—there the dead man is still only forty, his brow unfurl. rowed by the sweetly bitter burdens of his journal, radiant with that childishly luminescent trust that he managed to carry with him throughout his mortal life and that returned to him even when already doomed.

To the best of all music they bear the wreaths—they bear wreaths from Soviet soldiers And with reason. I remember how the lads at the front as one man preferred the marvel of his trusty ‘Tyorkin’ to all other wartime books. And let us remember too how army libraries were forbidden to subscribe to Novy Mir, and how not so long ago its readers were hauled before the CO for questioning.

And now the whole gang from the Writers’ Union has flopped on to the scene. The guard of honour comprises that same flabby crowd that hunted him down with unholy shrieks and cries. Yes, it's an old, old custom of ours, it was the same with Pushkin.

It is precisely into the hands of his enemies that the dead poet falls. And they hastily dispose of the body, covering up with breezy speeches. They crowd round the coffin in a solid ring and think they have fenced off. Just as they destroyed our only journal and think they have won.

But you need to be deaf and blind to the last century of Russia's history to regard this as a victory and not an irreparable blunder! Madmen! When the voices of the young resound, keenedged, how you will miss this patient critic, whose gentle admonitory voice was heeded by all. Then you will be set to tear the earth with your hands for the sake of returning Trifonovich. But then it will be too late.